The Newest Evolution of Creationism

Barbara Forrest

Intelligent design is about politics and religion, not science.

The infamous August 1999 decision by the Kansas Board of Education to
delete references to evolution from Kansas science standards was
heavily influenced by advocates of intelligent-design theory. Although
William A. Dembski, one of the movement's leading figures, asserts
that "the empirical detectability of intelligent causes renders
intelligent design a fully scientific theory," its proponents invest
most of their efforts in swaying politicians and the public, not the
scientific community.

Launched by Phillip E. Johnson's book Darwin on Trial (1991), the
intelligent-design movement crystallized in 1996 as the Center for the
Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), sponsored by the Discovery
Institute, a conservative Seattle think tank. Johnson, a law professor
whose religious conversion catalyzed his antievolution efforts,
assembled a group of supporters who promote design theory through
their writings, financed by CRSC fellowships. According to an early
mission statement, the CRSC seeks "nothing less than the overthrow of
materialism and its damning cultural legacies."

Johnson refers to the CRSC members and their strategy as the Wedge,
analogous to a wedge that splits a log—meaning that intelligent
design will liberate science from the grip of "atheistic naturalism."
Ten years of Wedge history reveal its most salient features: Wedge
scientists have no empirical research program and, consequently, have
published no data in peer-reviewed journals (or elsewhere) to support
their intelligent-design claims. But they do have an aggressive public
relations program, which includes conferences that they or their
supporters organize, popular books and articles, recruitment of
students through university lectures sponsored by campus ministries,
and cultivation of alliances with conservative Christians and
influential political figures.

The Wedge aims to "renew" American culture by grounding society's
major institutions, especially education, in evangelical religion. In
1996, Johnson declared: "This isn't really, and never has been, a
debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy." According
to Dembski, intelligent design "is just the Logos of John's Gospel
restated in the idiom of information theory." Wedge strategists seek
to unify Christians through a shared belief in "mere" creation,
aiming—in Dembskis words—"at defeating naturalism, and its
consequences." This enables intelligent-design proponents to coexist
in a big tent with other creationists who explicitly base their
beliefs on a literal interpretation of Genesis.

"As Christians," writes Dembski, "we know naturalism is false. Nature
is not self-sufficient. . . . Nonetheless neither theology nor
philosophy can answer the evidential question whether God's
interaction with the world is empirically detectable. To answer this
question we must look to science."Jonathan Wells, a biologist, and
Michael J. Behe, a biochemist, seem just the CRSC fellows to give
intelligent design the ticket to credibility. Yet neither has actually
done research to test the theory, much less produced data that
challenges the massive evidence accumulated by biologists, geologists,
and other evolutionary scientists. Wells, influenced in part by
Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, earned Ph.D.'s in religious
studies and biology specifically "to devote my life to destroying
Darwinism." Behe sees the relevant question as whether "science can
make room for religion." At heart, proponents of intelligent design
are not motivated to improve science but to transform it into a
theistic enterprise that supports religious faith.

Wedge supporters are at present trying to insert intelligent design
into Ohio public-school science standards through state
legislation. Earlier the CRSC advertised its science education site by
assuring teachers that its "Web curriculum can be appropriated without
textbook adoption wars"— in effect encouraging teachers to do an
end run around standard procedures. Anticipating a test case, the
Wedge published in the Utah Law Review a legal strategy for winning
judicial sanction. Recently the group almost succeeded in inserting
into the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 a "sense of the
Senate" that supported the teaching of intelligent design. So the
movement is advancing, but its tactics are no substitute for real
science.

Barbara Forrest is an associate professor of philosophy at
Southeastern Louisiana University.